Crawford strove to mirror the man in the colour scheme, too. “It’s a very intense, colourful painting — much like the individual.”

Here, artist and subject diverge. Where Ford is brash, Crawford is soft-spoken.

A self-described fiscal conservative, Crawford agrees with the mayor about most things, and joined his executive council last year.

But on matters of style, the men could hardly be more different.

“He is who he is. I haven’t always agreed with how he presented himself,” Crawford said. “If I was mayor, would I do what he does? Probably not. He’s very loud, bombastic. I tend to be more of a conciliator.”

After Ford was filmed slurring his speech during an outing at the Taste of the Danforth, Crawford quipped on Twitter, “So, who had more fun, me painting Mayor or Mayor painting the town?”

“Is there a darker side to the mayor?” Crawford said. “Will that possibly come out in the canvas? It could.”

Then again, an artist is wise not to spurn his patron, and Crawford’s patron is Diane Ford.

That fact has tempered his instinct for brutal honesty. As has Ford’s illustrious office. When John Howard Sanden painted George W. Bush’s official White House portrait, he struggled to keep the President’s native smirk at bay. Crawford has been similarly forgiving.

“This is a painting for his mother. It needs to be in some respects flattering.” Plus, Crawford said, “he is the mayor.”

Ford is a career — indeed, a dynastic — politician whose brother and late father also sparred in the electoral ring.

Not Crawford, a lifelong artist who only began moonlighting as a councillor in 2010, when he won the open seat for Scarborough Southwest. Before that he had been a stay-at-home Dad and a school board trustee. All the while, he painted — he has a fine arts degree from York.

And painting is still his passion, especially during the dog days of summer, with council out of session.

These days, Crawford rises with the sun. By 6:30 a.m., he’s in his basement studio.

Not one for the solemn hush of artistic solitude, the councillor has been tweeting updates of his work from a personal account, @GaryCrawfordArt.

It’s from his tweets that we learn his predilection for listening to Led Zeppelin as warm-up music. And of his interdiction against mixing beer and painting.

“It’s allowing people into my studio to let people know what my creative process is all about,” he said.

When it’s finished, the Ford canvas will have taken 100 hours of work, Crawford guesses.

The mayor hasn’t given an opinion on his portrait yet. But Crawford has lately been suffering from Ford fatigue.

“Done for the day,” he tweeted Friday. “Been spending a bit too much time with ya Rob.”